Multi-lingual sites and extensive use of CUSTOMVARs

[rroussev]

Good morning to all Actinic Gurus!

I've recently downloaded a trial version of Actinic and am evaluating it at the moment whether it can provide for 2 of our important requirements. Any shared experiences, tips, and/or tricks would be highly appreciated:

1) I need to be able to provide our site in 3 different languages: English, Dutch, and Hungarian. I think one way of doing this is simply to create 3 separate sites, but that would mean that every single update of products, prices, etc. would have to be done 3 times. Does anyone have any experience with running multi-lingual sites with Actinic?

2) The products we're selling are personalized chocolate wrappers. All products have the same price, but have a number of components required:

- personal text for the front of the wrapper
- font for the front text
- personal text for the back of the wrapper
- font for the back text
- choice of milk, white, or dark chocolate

Now, all of the above have been configured as CUSTOMVARs, but I have a feeling CUSTOMVARs are global variables and not per product.. Is this correct?

I'd also like to have all of the above entered in the shopping cart after a customer has chosen to ADD TO BASKET a particular wrapper. Unfortunately I haven't been able to figure out HOW to have the CUSTOMVARs displayed on the CART pages. I've inserted the following code in the Act_OrderDetail.html, but it doesn't show up:

<textarea name=CUSTOMVAR:BACK_TEXT cols=40 rows=2>enter front text here</textarea>
<SELECT NAME=CUSTOMVAR:BACK_FONT><OPTION VALUE=1 SELECTED><B>Arial</B><OPTION VALUE=2 >Times New Roman</SELECT>

I've read both the getting started and Advanced manuals, but am unable to figure out whether it is possible at all to have CUSTOMVARs displayed in the shopping cart.

Any shared experiences would be greatly appreciated!

Regards

[NormanRouxel]

Firstly. You can set CUSTOMVAR values at the global, section or product level.

However you can't use them to collect user input or display them at checkout (not without Perl patches anyway).

Also you may want to look at www.drillpine.biz/actinicstuff/ where I've posted a patch that turns the Other Info Prompt into a multi-field one. You could use this for the user input and use normal Attributes and choices for the fonts and choc colours.

Have a look at http://www.uplymeembroidery.co.uk/ac...k_T_shirt.html and you'll see it in action on a live site. Try clicking one of the fonts to see what happens.

Norman

[rroussev]

Thanks Norman. This is really useful. I'll try it out and report back if any problems.

Any hints on the multi-lingual question?

Many thanks again for your assistance!

Regards: Rossen

[cdicken]

1) I need to be able to provide our site in 3 different languages: English, Dutch, and Hungarian. I think one way of doing this is simply to create 3 separate sites, but that would mean that every single update of products, prices, etc. would have to be done 3 times. Does anyone have any experience with running multi-lingual sites with Actinic?

You will need to have three sites, but you can have each site linked (via Actinic Business's 'External Linking' feature) to a single database. That will mean you only have one place to maintain all your prices etc. and three three stores will automatically pick up on any changes you make in the external DB.